Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Visibility is not equality.
Being me is a full-time job.
I want people to see the truth.
I am Chelsea Manning. I am female.
I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy.
When you're a kid dreaming, anything seems possible.
Owning my identity... ties into my value of dignity.
Presenting myself and my gender is about my right to exist.
I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, I think it's safe to say.
As I rebuild my life, I remind myself not to relive the past.
Our society's dependence on imagery says a lot about our values.
I really don't care how I am perceived by people on the outside.
Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society
As a young kid, I spent a lot of time exploring the world around me.
It's not my goal to be a leader or spokesperson, or anything like that.
Joy, confidence, and security can't begin until we are able to just be ourselves.
If an organization produces a document, it should be made public as soon as possible.
Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine.
From my perspective, the world's shaped me more than anything else. It's a feedback loop.
I have served a sufficiently long sentence. I am not asking for a pardon of my conviction.
I don't think that I'm embracing any kind of leadership for transparency or trans advocacy.
I sometimes feel less than empty; I feel non-existent. Still, I endure. I refuse to give up.
Day-to-day life is as simple as it is routine - though my days are often long and very busy.
By December 2009, I had come to terms with my gender identity just as I was deployed to Iraq.
There is far more to transitioning in the public eye than money, public relations, and logistics.
Living such an opaque life has forced me never to take transparency, openness, and honesty for granted.
We should all be able to live as human beings - and to be recognized as such by the societies we live in.
The military is diverse and large, and it's public: it serves a public function; it serves a public duty.
I think the embryonic digital world had the same affect on me as the openness of the old American frontier.
I think it's actually kind of sweet how there is a reciprocal effect that our stories can have on each other.
As a young queer kid growing up, I explored my identity through the Chicago and Washington, D.C., club scene.
The leaders of ISIS are canny strategists with a solid understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the West.
The first time I passed as a woman in public was on leave in the U.S. from my deployment to Iraq in February 2010.
When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
I think we can achieve meaningful change, but only if we demand that the institutions themselves change their behavior.
While being tossed around the world from place to place as a teenager, I wasn't really tethered to any place or anyone.
Counter-insurgency warfare is not a simple thing... it's not as simple as, like, good guys versus bad guys. It is a mess.
I can only ask of those who care about me and the issues in my case to support me and spread the word about what is going on.
I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the [U.S. Disciplinary Barracks] as the person I was born to be.
We need to continue to build and support queer and trans communities and end the profiling and criminalization that so many face.
Donations to my legal defense fund really help, and I think keeping me motivated and spreading the message are also very important.
Privacy is not a luxury in America: it is a right - one that we need to defend in the digital realm as much as in the physical realm.
Suffrage is not a right afforded to everyone. Rather, voting is a privilege in the United States - and a hard-earned privilege at that.
Unfortunately, prisons try very hard to make us inhuman and unreal by denying our image, and thus our existence, to the rest of the world.
Anxiety, depression, and suicide don't discriminate based on how much money you have - though it might make it easier for you to get help.
I want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.
The U.S. intelligence community is in a very poor position to be trusted with protecting civil liberties while engaging in intelligence work.
While universal suffrage remains an ideal yet to be attained, if you're lucky enough to be able to vote, don't let that privilege go to waste.
Even if I didn't have the support that I have, I would still be fighting the same fights, and I would still be the same person that I am today.
The unique problem for transgender women in prison is that our health and welfare are also the responsibility of those charged with overseeing us.